Review: API Gateway HTTP APIs

Cheaper and Faster REST APIs?

Don't miss our blog post Review: API Gateway HTTP APIs - Cheaper and Faster REST APIs?, the written version of this podcast episode.

HTTP APIs

An API gateway acts as an API front-end that receives API requests from clients and forwards them to back-end services. Typically, an API gateway offers the following features:

• Throttling
• Billing
• Authentication and authorization
• Request validation
• Request and response transformation

AWS offers different types of API gateways as a managed service. This review takes a closer look at the new service API Gateway HTTP APIs announced in December 2019 and generally since available in March 2020. The cloud provider promises that HTTP APIs are faster and cheaper than it's predecessor. We will look at hard technical facts instead of flowery marketing promises.

A summary of Amazon's API gateways to avoid confusion:

• API Gateway REST APIs is the full-feature flagship service to build REST APIs announced in 2015.
• API Gateway HTTP APIs is the fast and straightforward alternative to build REST APIs announced in 2019.
• API Gateway WebSocket APIs was announced in 2018 and allows you to build a real-time API using WebSockets.
• Application Load Balancer (ALB) is a layer-7 load balancer with similarities with an API gateway.

This review focuses on HTTP APIs.

Further AWS reviews

Looking for more reviews of AWS services? Here you go!

• Review: AWS Backup - A centralized place for managing backups?
• Review: Amazon Aurora Serverless - A cloud-native and production-ready relational database?
• Review: AWS Global Accelerator - Improving Latency and Design for Failure
• [Review: Amazon Connect – A Programmable Telephone System](https://cloudonaut.io/review-amazon-connect-programmable-telephone-system/]

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